# Information for New HTAN Centers

Welcome to the Human Tumor Atlas Network!

The Resources page of the HTAN Data Portal provides documentation and applicable policies detailing the requirements for publications, data sharing, and data use.

All HTAN members must have an executed Human Tumor Atlas Network DMSA (Internal Data and Materials Sharing Agreement) (HTAN DMSA) with Sage Bionetworks prior to contributing data to the HTAN Data Coordinating Center (DCC). To initiate execution of the HTAN DMSA, contact Sage HTAN Governance (htan@sagebionetworks.jira.com). Please include the name and contact information of your HTAN PI and Institution Signatory to enable routing the HTAN DMSA for execution.

HTAN Centers are assigned a data liaison from the (DCC). Trans-Network Projects (TNPs) are also assigned liaisons. Your liaison will help guide you through setting up a new atlas or project, creating HTAN identifiers, and submitting metadata and data files. Please keep your liaison informed of publications timelines and new data submissions.

Please see the appropriate page of this manual for additional details about HTAN center responsibilities for data de-identification, including submitting a data de-identification plan, and specific instructions regarding how to submit data. Clinical, biospecimen, and assay data submitted to the DCC are distributed to repositories based on access levels. Information regarding how data are accessed by external users is described more in other parts of this manual.

In order to support the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) principles for scientific data production, the DCC has developed a data model based on established standards in the scientific research community. The HTAN Data Model is expected to evolve with advances in science. This evolution is a community-driven, peer-reviewed process, where members of a working group will first assess established community data standards and create a request for comment (RFC) document soliciting community feedback. The RFC process is described in more detail in later pages of this manual. We look forward to working with you and learning from your expertise as we improve upon our current model.